Candy cane cupcakes
(Image credit: Future)

Candy cane cupcakes make the perfect Christmas food gift for friends or family. This recipe uses a mincemeat and coconut-based sponge, but you can use whatever variation of sponge you'd prefer.

Ingredients

Step 1

To make the candy canes, roll long thin red and white sausages until they are about 16cm long. Roll the modelling paste under a small rectangle of acetate to make the sausages nice and smooth.

Step 2

Holding the ends of the paste, twist in opposite directions until you have an equal coloured twist. Roll until you have a smooth twist.

Step 3

Bend around at each end, trimmimg the ends to make them neat and then cutting in the centre to give you two canes.

Step 4

Using a small brush or whatever you have, add a dent to one of the canes so you can lay one onto the other. Stick them together with a brush of water.

Step 5

For the holly, cut 20mm circles and emboss down the centre.

Step 6

Use the 5mm cutter to cut away sections to make the holly points.

Step 7

Stick the holly and a few rolled berries made using the leftover red paste, sticking them with a brush of water. Then stick the holly to the centre of the canes and leave them to dry on a drying sponge or greaseproof paper overnight.

Step 8

The next day, bake your cupcakes. Leave to cool. Make your batch of buttercream and add a Wilton 2E Plain piping nozzle to a piping bag. Pop the coconut and some magic sparkles into a small dish.

Step 9

Pipe a plain swirl by holding the nozzle in the centre of the cupcake, applying pressure, keeping the tip of the nozzle in the buttercream and piping until the buttercream is almost at the edge of the paper.

Step 10

Dip the cupcakes into the coconut, adding more sparkles as you need them.

Step 11

Candy cane cupcakes

(Image credit: Future)

Add a blob of buttercream to the back of the dried canes and add one to each cupcake. Your festive cakes are now ready to serve.

GoodtoKnow

Trusted, informative, and empathetic – GoodToKnow is the ultimate online destination for mums. Established in 2007, our 15-year-strong archive of content includes more than 18,000 articles, 1,500 how-to videos, and 7,000 recipes.